Smart Contracts for Social Good

For Bitcoin Wednesday’s 53rd edition on 1 November, 2017, Fraser Brown, Founder and Chairman of the ACT Foundation in Zug, Switzerland will discuss the concept of Blockchain for social good and explain the developments around the ACT DAO.

ACT is an Ethereum-based decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that is designed to allow its members to submit and vote on social action proposals and to support the causes that receive the most votes. Through the ACT DAO members can fund the support needed to move governments to take action where it is needed to make the state more responsive to its citizens’ needs.

“Despite good intentions from many sides, governments simply do not move fast enough to protect our climate, food security and biodiversity,” Fraser writes. “Only people can change this situation, and they will only be successful if they are empowered to do so. That result is what ACT aims to achieve.”

During Fraser’s presentation he will give a demo of the alpha version of the ACT Platform which was launched in early October 2017. ACT raised over $262,000 in a pre-ICO campaign in July 2017, and its Munich-based development team has been working on the project since the beginning of 2017. ACT’s smart contracts are designed to fund social projects at any scale and speed. Fraser will describe the ACT and ACTION tokens and how each one works to empower a decentralized curation function on the platform where curators are rewarded in ether for their work. This functionality ensures no centralized control over what its citizens can fund.

Fraser Brown is an engineer by training with an MBA from Trinity College Dublin. In 2014 he represented Ireland in sailing at the Athens Olympic Games. He is a serial entrepreneur with experience in diamonds and other high-end jewelry as well as in software development. Since 2010 he has advised global institutions and governments on innovative financing solutions for climate change. In this work his clients include the International Union for Conservation of Nature, Climate Change and Food Security Program of a global scientific organization. He is also strategy director of an initiative funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the Climate Smart Lending Program that supports lending for small holder farmers in Africa. He is also a mentor with Yunus Social Enterprise.